Strawberry Pillows, Day 4

Ah, to frolic in a garden of strawberries as big as my house!  Can you imagine how delicious that would be?  Berry delicious!

I decided to work on the Cheep Talk/Sweet & Sour strawberry pillow first.  I didn't have any red or pink polka-dotted fabric on hand, so hopefully this yellow-flecked, punch-colored piece will do.  Also, I didn't have enough fabric to cut the 24" equilateral triangle that the pattern called for, so I made it as large as I could.

The next step was to mark a 60-degree angle on the fabric.  The 6"x24" ruler that I use for cutting straight edges has markings for 60, 45, and 30 degrees, but I hadn't used them before.  Also, I didn't know how to use them, but I finally learned how to with this tutorial!  All you do is place the 60-degree line on the straight edge of your fabric, and then cut along the angled side of your ruler!  Seems pretty straight-forward, and I'm sure that any middle school student would have been able to tell me how to use it, but I wouldn't have been able to figure it out myself, as I suffer from a severe case of math phobia.  I believe the technical term is "I Just Don't Feel Like Thinking Today."

After sewing up one of the sides and matching the sewn seam with the fabric fold, the pattern says to "mark a 4-inch long line perpendicular to the seam."  I wondered if there was a reason why the line had to be 4" inches long, and if it would make any difference if the berry was a different size.  Maybe it had something to do with it being an equilateral triangle, but I didn't feel like working it out in my head.  My patchwork strawberry is going to be much smaller, so I'll see if the 4" long line will change how the berry ends up.

We trim the tip of the triangle off, then open up the bottom and make into a diamond shape.

Mark 1" inch from the top and bottom of the diamond, and sew along the markings.  Be careful not to sew the diamond to the main body of the berry!  Turn it inside out, and get ready to stuff!

Let's see how much of this 32-oz bag of fiberfill can fit into my 13" strawberry.

So that I didn't have fiberfill flying all of the place, I stuck one end of the bag into the strawberry and pushed as much fiberfill into the berry as I could.

I needed to make the berry as full as possible.  Berry, berry full.

And here's what the bottom of my berry looks like.

Well, I think I've had my fill of berries today.  Tomorrow we close it up and make the berry topping!